Thanks to everyone that came down for the BellJar website relaunch!! It was a huge success and as the pictures will show, everyone was having a lot of fun. It always surprises me the amount of boys that show up to the BellJar parties, but I guess you give out free drinks and invite pretty girls, and the boys will come!!

We know you have been waiting patiently but the moment has finally come! I know we are freaking out too. You better get in while the getting is good!

I have had the most insane two months. So much has happened and I have just been out of sorts, catching up, taking care of things and getting everything on track. A combination of some intense family situations, a little strife at the store, a ton of work to catch up on and some personal struggles I have just been treading water. But the good news is my hard work is paying off.

I had so much anxiety around coming back to SF for so long! I have been here almost a month. When I moved to LA I’m realizing I ran away a little. And that’s ok. It’s been great for me. Sometimes you have to remove yourself from a situation to really gain perspective on it. When you are stuck in the muck it’s difficult to see the tracks that lead you there. I have been really doing some major soul searching in LA and it’s really starting to pay off.

As I drove up to SF I was crying on the phone to my best friend saying how I Was just not ready to be here and talking about how I just don’t like it here anymore. She explained to me that SF had been my home for 20 years and I had to come back and rebuild a new kind of life here and remember why I loved it so much. And she was so right. I have repaired some situations that were dragging me down, I focused a ton of energy in doing right by my business, I took care of some issues on my home and mostly I took care of myself…and miraculously everything is falling into place. I have had the best time up here and I’m really actually sad to be going back to LA. This month has strengthened my ties to SF.

I’m here for one more week and then I head back to attend one of my besties wedding down in LA. It’s been almost two months since I have been there and so much has changed! I’m excited to see how my life will evolve now that a lot of the weight has been lifted from my shoulders. And finally I feel like I am both in the emotional and soon the financial place to open my BellJar LA. So excited. Life is getting good.

xo xo xo

She’s keeping it klassy in the lieu of financial and social decay. I feel ya in your fishnets. She may be my new hero.

I sometimes wonder how I made it through my teen years without a computer. I had to actually go to the library to research cool things, like mod culture, punk rock and studio 54. I would sit and thumb through picture books on Pop culture and try to visually absorb as much as I could, I would often photocopy cool pictures on the black and white photo copier for 10 cents a pop and then hang them on my bedroom wall. Now with a click of my mouse so much info…so much stimulation so so much to look at. I wonder if the kids today understand the power and appreciate all the information and beauty the internet can provide, or do they just sit and stare at facebook and play video games all day?

While searching for an old Helmut Newton Vogue shoot from the 80′s I was obsessed with I found this video. Love the hair and makeup and I;m dying for the 80′s cool cold Glamour. I still wonder, why cant we born old and die young?

I just don’t know where I Have been. Lost in a dream, moving forward, stepping back, losing myself, finding myself again and just all over the place. I’ve been back in San Francisco for two weeks, to deal with a few things at the shop…get my hair done, check on my house, deal with a traffic ticket and all I can say is I can’t wait to get back to Los Angeles. It’s cold a gloomy outside, yesterday my car got towed and my life in SF is just kind of static. Sometimes I wonder if moving to LA was me running away…but being back here just reminds me that everything in life has an expiration date and my life here has just gone sour.

I have caught up with friends, spent a glorious weekend in Mendocino, hang out with a boy, gotten fed up with said boy, spent time with my shop girls and making sure things are still running smoothly and now I’m ready to get in my car and head back to the sun. Awe I miss you little apartment in LA, I miss my daily juice at Naturewells. I miss my morning hike at Elysian Park. I miss my shopping trips downtown for the store. I miss my weekend trip to all the flea markets. I miss BBQ’s and days spent drinking wine outdoors with friends. I miss reading and painting and searching for a new art studio. This trip has confirmed that LA is my home. 20 years in SF…and now LA has my heart. See you in a few days.

I have been so sick for the past few days. I will not go into the gory details but it’s the sickest I have been for years. The last time I got this sick was right after my divorce and that time I was so ill that I had to cancel a trip to Paris! I was so used to having Mason around to take care of me and I have always had problems asking for help…so for 5 days I laid on my couch, dying, not eating and did not call anyone..and even refused the offers that I had to come by, check on me, bring me supplies. Well not this time. But being in LA I don’t have the support group I did in SF. I mean there are people down here I know would help…but I just feel weird asking. Thanks god one of my besties from SF is now living in LA. I called Caitlen yesterday morning crying after spending the entire night on the floor of my bathroom.

She rushed over with 7-up and saltines and gave me and my poor cooped up dogs some much needed love and attention. I’m feeling marginally better today…but I miss my Mommy, I miss my home and I’m so thankful I have Caitlin down here. There is nothing like having great girlfriends. I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world.

My hair in matted to my head, I have had the same clothes on for three days and I’m afraid I am fusing to my couch. Not feeling very darling at all. Can we just pretend I actually look like this?

I watched the moonrise yesterday. It was still light when she appeared and hovered above the hazy skyline, faded like an old photo washed by the Summer sun. She was a big, translucent pie that I wanted to reach out, grab and greedily gobble up like a starving child. I watched her move and grow and then retreat as the the last bit of dusk was swallowed by darkness.

I had a hard time falling asleep last night. I tossed and turned till Midnight. At 1:40 I was awoken by a light shining powerfully through my window. It was as if a street post had been erected directly outside my room. I felt the gleaming beams as I tried to readjust and shield my eyes from it’s glare. My sleepy mind struggled to recall how brightly lit my room was on other nights as it desperately clung to a cloudy abyss.

The lights intensity forced me my from my sleep, so I stepped out to get a closer look. As the bright light illuminated me, I realized the moon had followed me home. She clung to my windowsill like a crazed cat insisting to be let in. Howling and screaming, she he had grown twice her earlier dusk risen size and intensely cast her cold blue light upon my cheeks.

I wanted to flea the house and run through tall grassy fields and become part of her night glow but felt constrained by my urban dwelling and the unknown that lurked outside my city door. Reluctantly I slipped back in to bed in search of a silent slumber that never came. I woke half rested convinced I am ruled by the moon.

This morning I was browsing through twitter and I was getting caught up on the lives of some of my old friends that I don’t see/talk to much anymore. It’s strange to me that we have these electronic social media outlets that allow us a porthole into a life we once had. It’s so impersonal and it keeps me from picking up the phone to say, “hi, how are you, what’s up with your life? I still think about you.” Instead after a 5 min scroll through, I can feel as if I’m updated enough to skip having any awkward impersonal and forced interactions.

It has become glaringly clear how much my life has changed; how many layers I have shed, exactly how many roads I have chosen not to follow. And here I am. Not exactly where I ever expected to be. My life is so completely different than I imagined it. As a teenager I clung to an image of my adult life, and it got me through, it gave me hope. And I achieved that vision: home, secure job, husband, Volvo in the driveway, tight knit group of besties that I shopped and cocktailed with on Sundays, yet sill I felt like a tiny little ship lost at sea. But here I am 5 years later, and I’m single, I crashed my Volvo, I’m living in an apartment in LA, I can’t remember the last time me and my besties spoke, yet I’m the happiest I have ever been.

I have been reborn, I am a different person but still sometimes I look back and wonder what was the pivotal moment when everything changed? I can’t help wonder if my past has any idea of the Sasha that exists now. This calm, happy, and self actualized work in progress. But that’s the thing about changing, sometimes you have to remove the people that expect you to be a certain way, to really change. You start performing for them. You fall into a roll and it becomes hard to break free. I had outgrown the roll that I cast myself into. The unhappy house wife, the over dramatic, broken hearted cheakster, the silly ninny laughing off her heartache through humor. I was bigger than life, I was the loudest and most vocal in the room and I really convinced myself that this made me strong, this made me something to look up to.

Sometimes I miss my rambunctious and defiant earlier self. She was raw, she was real, she was entertaining, and she served a very important purpose to my growth. She allowed me to deal with all the sadness from my childhood, all the regrets that filled my twenties and ultimately all the disappointment I felt when the vision of my utopia crumpled and revealed itself as a farce. But I have absolved myself of that earlier unneeded baggage. I no longer cling to what was. There are too many new adventures waiting out there, so many interesting characters to meet and so many joy filled moments to experience. The Sasha that I am today can feel and taste and gobble up all the loveliness that this life has to offer. I can feel and love and experience happiness in a way I was unaware possible. But I would not have made it here if it wasn’t for my earlier audacious, outrages, protective incarnation or the people that adored her. So to them and to her I say thank you. You are still loved.